Shaping the Shifting
Dubai-based Filipino artist Nathaniel Alapide’s sand art is a meditation on life, love, and the courage to carve meaning into a world that constantly moves.
Words Jaymar Aquino
Photo courtesy of Nathaniel Alapide and Mox Santos
September 20, 2025
With each retreating tide, a gallery emerges, wide and waiting. The sand, blank and unassuming, becomes canvas and memory at once, a landscape where time inscribes its brief masterpieces.
For most, the beach is where footprints vanish. For Nathaniel Alapide, it is where stories endure.
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In 2022, the Dubai-based Filipino artist etched his name into history with the Guinness World Record for the largest sand image: a sprawling 23,000-square-meter portrait of the leaders of the UAE, created over the course of 30 days.
Armed with nothing more than a garden rake, he worked alongside ten assistants, shaping the sand hauled in from 150 truckloads, layered in four distinct colors to bring depth to the image.
At times, strong desert winds swept across the worksite, blurring lines and scattering patterns, forcing him to redraw the design more than five times.
What finally emerged was not only a record-breaking artwork but also a living symbol of patience, endurance, and his embrace of impermanence.
The roots of a vision
“I was holding on to the nurturing love that she has given to us,” the artist reflects on the first sand art he ever created, a tribute to his late grandmother. “For me, she was like a tree that provided us with love and care and unconditional acceptance while growing up.”
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Guided by that love, he shaped the image of a tree into the sands of Jumeirah, allowing grief and memory to merge with the rhythm of the tide. That single gesture of creation became the seed from which his art would grow, connecting loss, devotion, and the transience of all things.
As the tide carried his art forward, so too did it carry Alapide toward new stages and audiences. From being a full-time sand artist at a 5-star luxury hotel in Dubai to global commissions for Burberry, Adidas, National Geographic, and more, his works have dominated the shores of the United Arab Emirates.
He has even drawn portraits of Sheikh Hamdan with camels, created call-to-action messages during the pandemic that urged communities to “Stay Home,” and even filled a golf bunker with his art.
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Yet his proudest accomplishment, he reflects, is not measured in records. “It would be the simple life that I am living. Being able to do the work that I love in an environment that I love. Being able to wake up every day and not having to rush through traffic to get to work. Being able to live fully as an artist.”
Asked what his grandmother might say now, he laughs: “She would say ‘wear sunscreen.’” Yet even in her absence, he senses her presence. “I’m pretty sure she would be cheering for me like she always does. I believe we don't really lose people; they just transform into a different form of energy, and we carry them in our being.
The art of letting go
Long before the soaring towers and restless rhythm of Dubai, there were the bustling neighborhoods of Quezon City. As a child, Nathaniel would stare at the peeling paint on his bedroom walls. “If I stare long enough, I would see shapes and figures that are interesting,” he recalls, letting the cracks come alive in his imagination.
In 1986, his family moved to Antipolo, where rolling hills and wide, open skies stretched endlessly. He and his siblings would sit on a big boulder, watching planes drift above and clouds cast slow shadows across the land. “This, I think, is my early realization that everything around me is in motion, the impermanence of things,” he says.
Nights spent on the roof with binoculars, tracking full moons and shooting stars, became a ritual that sharpened his attention to cycles and rhythms. Even today, he times his sand art with the lunar phases, knowing a full moon offers low tide and a vast expanse to create.
After high school, an art workshop at Pinto Art Gallery cemented his path. “I got to be friends with the resident artists there. I was inspired by their works and the place, that’s when I decided to make art. Dubai really opened that part. The sand artist was ‘born’ in Dubai.”
The birth was not of ambition, but of pause. Alapide has always loved stillness, and sand has become a medium that matches his temperament. Its temporary nature does not frustrate him; it consoles. “I never wished for it to stay forever,” he says. “I wanted to remind the viewer of the fleeting nature of the world around them, like watching a beautiful sunset or sunrise.”
He adds, “When people see the sand art, they become aware that soon the tide will wash it away. There’s this acceptance of something beautiful that will go away, and so they cherish looking at it more with reverence.”
Footprints across shores
Even abroad, he holds fast to his roots. “I keep my Filipino identity alive by engaging in cultural activities here in the UAE and also by collaborating with other Filipino artists and creatives in the region.”
Beyond the shores of Dubai, he dreams of returning to the Philippine islands, traveling by bicycle from coast to coast to leave traces of his sand art that capture both memory and movement.
Asked what his advice is for those carving their own path in art, he traced the memories of the dunes beneath his hands. “All we have is our story. I hope that when they read or hear my story, they will be inspired to take the journey into reaching their full potential by nurturing what they love and living a life that they are proud of.”
And so, as the tide rises, his creations dissolve into water and sky, yet the imprint of his vision lingers in the mind.
Nathaniel Alapide is an artist who discovered early on that the true measure of beauty is not in what remains unchanged, but in the courage to shape meaning within the ever-shifting sands of life. In each wave, each grain, each passing moment, his art whispers a reminder: to honor love, embrace change, and leave a mark that is as profound as it is fleeting.
